European Parliament to end anonymous committee votes

The European Parliament voted yesterday (26 February) to back new rules that will require all final votes by MEPs in its committees to be recorded by name and published. This change will take effect from the date of the next plenary session, which starts on 10 March.

At present, such roll-call votes are routine only for votes in meetings of the full parliament, though they are possible in committees, on a request from at least one-quarter of committee members.

Amendments put forward today by MEPs from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), make the default position for amendments to reports that they would be voted on by a show of hands, without a roll call, but MEPs can request roll-call votes in committees for individual amendments, if at least one-quarter of committee members or a political group demand it.

The EPP was initially opposed to the expansion of roll-call voting, which in its initial form had been proposed by Morten Messerschmidt, a far-right Dane.

A vote on the proposal was scheduled to take place during the first plenary session in February, but was delayed by growing opposition, primarily from the main centre-right and centre-left groups.

All but one of the MEPs from the European People’s Party on the constitutional-affairs committee voted against the proposal when it was adopted by the committee in December, with opposition then spreading to some centre-left Socialists and Democrats.

The proposal bears the name of Carlo Casini, a centre-right Italian, the committee’s chairman. His report, once amended, was adopted by 617 votes to 23.

The Parliament’s administration expects that no technical adaptations will be necessary to make the change a reality. Transparency campaigners have been calling for the expansion of roll-call voting for years.